This reminds me of comedian Dick Shawn. He would pull really crazy stuff on stage. During one performance in San Diego, earlier in the act, Shawn was joking about the nuclear apocalypse. A few minutes later, he portrayed a politician reciting campaign clichés, including, "If elected, I will not lay down on the job." When he fell face down on the stage, the audience thought it was part of the act. After some time had gone by, there were catcalls. Finally, someone appeared on stage, kneeled down to examine Shawn, stood up and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?" Another person came on stage, turned him over and began administering CPR. The audience was told to go home, but almost no one left since it appeared to be part of Shawn's act. When paramedics arrived, bewildered audience members began leaving, still unsure of what they had witnessed. A notice in the following day's San Diego Union newspaper (not on page one) clarified that Shawn had indeed experienced a heart attack on stage and died.

Much of that was lifted from the Wiki (I don't usually trust Wiki as a source), but it sounds about right. I remember Shawns because I was a drama student in San Diego at the time and me and my friends had a long conversation about it, and what would happen to us if something were to happen to us on stage. Then we went out and got stoned or something. Those were heady days.

Unemployment in Europe... I'm telling you, there's at least one prop guy looking for a new job today. From having worked at a lighting technician (i.e. lamp monkey) at an opera house as a student, I can tell you that crew negligence that leads to cast harm is most definitely a fireable offense. If a light I set up hurt an actor, I would've been gone on the spot, nevermind waiting til the next day.

Now, was it murder? Heh... someone else needs to give me that answer. All I know is that I can see a screwup like this happening in the heat of getting the production going.

Anytime you are working with prop weapons, it behooves you to hire someone extraordinarly meticulous to be in charge of them. It's not a job that allows any tolerance of irresponsibility. Anyone involved with not preparing the knife properly should be fired and not hired by anyone else ever again for a similar position.

It is not up to the actors to inspect props. It is up to the actors to act, and that's all they should be focusing on.

Erving Goffman writes somewhere, probably in _Frame Analysis_, that a stage or film kiss is not classified as a real kiss, under the idea that it isn't ``felt,'' but there is no such distinction for sexual intercourse.

The classification of an accidental stage stabbing would have to be very careful, as to what it is.

It is not up to the actors to inspect props. It is up to the actors to act, and that's all they should be focusing on.

While that's true, it's also true pilots run through a preflight checklist even though the mechanic is supposed to have taken care of everything. When a life is on the line it's best to use a belt and suspenders.

Also figures prominently in an episode of the first season of Rowan Atkinson's "Black Adder" series. Prince Edmund conspires to eliminate the King's favorite general by switching the prop knives in "Death of a Pharoah" (with the general as the special guest Pharoah) with real knives. The plot is aborted when Edmund learns that the general has interest of information to Edmund.